Kingsley, Frances (Fanny) Eliza Grenfell

(based on ODNB entry by Norman Vance)

Frances "Fanny" Eliza Grenfell was born in 1814, the daughter of Pascoe Grenfell, MP for Great Marlow, and his second wife, Georgiana St Leger.
Fanny was educated privately and in the mid 1830s she lived with three of her religious, unmarried sisters. The group was attracted the Catholic revival within the Church of England and were involved in joining an Anglican sisterhood, similar to Puseyite Park Village (established in 1845).
On July 6, 1839 Fanny met Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), a Cambridge undergraduate. The two began a protracted courtship, which the Grenfell family strongly disapproved of. Fanny introduced Kingsley to writers such as Coleridge, Carlyle, and F. D. Maurice and exercised a strong influence of his subsequent career in the Anglican Church. The two were finally married on 10 January 1844.

The couple settled in Hampshire, where Charles Kingsley took up the curacy of Eversley. The couple had four children and Fanny was heavily involved in her husband's parish work.
Following Charles' death, Fanny took up the writing and editing of his correspondence, publishing "Charles Kingsley: his Letters and Memoir of his Life" in 1877, as well as four volumes of his selected writings.
She died on 12 December 1891.

For more information, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry by Norman Vance. Available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47583.

Created 2015-10-29 by Anna St.Onge.

• English

• Latin

http://viaf.org/viaf/74734046
Norman Vance, ‘Kingsley , Frances Eliza (1814–1891)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47583, accessed 15 April 2016]
Copy of her diary available at: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/TheDiary/diary.asp?id=2. author.